Dolby Vision HDR support is finally coming to Disney's future 4K Blu-ray releases, as reported by Forbes – and the first two releases to include this are both summer blockbusters.
Disney has announced that Deadpool & Wolverine, set for release October 22, and Alien Romulus, set for release on December 3, will both support Dolby Vision HDR, marking the first Disney releases (other than some James Cameron titles) since Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which was released in 2018, to support Dolby Vision.
Dolby Vision is a popular HDR format that is seeing increasing support in the best TVs available – even budget models such as the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED support it. Dolby Vision improves picture quality on Dolby Vision compatible displays by improving color, contrast and brightness to give a wider dynamic image and better handling of highlights and dark tones in difficult scenes depending on what your TV's capable of.
Disney initially only used the standard HDR10 format on its Blu-rays, and it's not entirely clear why it has now decided to support Dolby Vision (considering it supports it on the Disney Plus streaming platform already) – although it's possible that Sony's acquisition of Disney's physical media production may have something to do with it, as Sony itself is a big user of Dolby Vision in its TVs, including the Sony Bravia 9, and some of the best 4K Blu-ray players.
Whatever the reason why, it's great news for home theater fans.
More 4K Blu-ray good news
It's no secret that the state of 4K Blu-ray and physical media has been looking bleak in recent years, with Disney all-but-signaling a shift away from it when it announced it would no longer sell 4K Blu-ray in Australia last year. It came down to the efforts of publishing houses such as Arrow Video, Criterion Collection and more to keep 4K Blu-ray from dying.
However, earlier this year, 2 big stores in the US announced they would stock discs and in the UK, HMV, a major AV retailer, announced that its physical media sales were on the rise.
With the arrival of Dolby Vision on Disney's 4K Blu-rays, it hopefully signals even more investment into the field that seemed to be in its 'dying days' not too long ago. Starting with a major Marvel release in Deadpool & Wolverine could bring more exposure into the benefits of Dolby Vision in home media, and in turn lead to a further resurgence in the physical media sector – showing streaming sites such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney Plus and Hulu, both of which recently announced further price hikes, that making streaming platforms more expensive is not a good look.
